Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

For startup founders, it’s never too early to start thinking about putting together a target market advisory board. The target market advisory board should consist of 2–4 industry veterans who have connections to C-level execs and VPs in your target market. Never discount the power of a warm intro.

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Advisory Board Sweat Equity Marketing Vertical 48

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. A well-developed product architecture helps a startup to achieve rapid market/product fit by successfully appealing to customers (users). What does this mean for their early stage investors? Revenue Architecture.

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Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 127

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

Home About Contact My thoughts & lessons learned on startups, entrepreneurship, marketing and other stuff. The Importance of Advisory Boards for Startup CEOs Tweet When a startup receives financing it will need to setup a Board of Directors. The Board probably existed beforehand, but was made up only of the founders.

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Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

Startups focus on speed since they are burning cash every day as they search for product/market fit. Equally important their VP of Marketing had brilliantly executed a stream of social media campaigns (Facebook likes and partnerships, email campaigns, etc.) These shortcuts add up and become what is called technical debt.

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Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. A well-developed product architecture helps a startup to achieve rapid market/product fit by successfully appealing to customers (users). What does this mean for their early stage investors? Revenue Architecture.

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2022

Even though many of these may seem intuitively obvious to most of you, I continue to see them overlooked by many, so I offer them for your consideration in staying a step ahead of the market and your competitors: Close the deal and cash the check before you spend it. Hire the best, and provide necessary training and tools.

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thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

Marketing Intern. How to Divide Equity to Startup Founders, Advisors, and Employees. The part that I’d like to zero in on is when you’ve got a high growth company what are some of the best practices out there to distribute equity to the founders, advisors, and employees? Equity for Employees. Board Member 1.

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Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 12, 2021

During the early days of my digital marketing business, my mentor offered counsel and functioned as my sounding board. 3- Helps employees develop skills. We practice career pathing in our company and mentorship helps ensure that our employees are on the right track to the next step in their path. 1- Offers counsel.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Advisory Board Leadership 125

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

We are purpose-built to not only invest pre-product but also to help accelerate your path to product-market fit with our decades of entrepreneurial and investing experience along with our active CXO advisory board. will be a great fit with the Salesforce marketing cloud. First check to seed?—?congrats

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Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 23, 2022

So, new employees who join the company may not know the principles and values you use to run the business and may take them for granted. If you start a new company, you will have the opportunity to hire people who may not have had the chance for respectable positions in the past and provide them with training at the same time.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2010

“When I get funded,” the entrepreneur thinks, “I can build a prototype, hire a development team, go to market, scale more quickly, and beat my competition.” Many startups have an advisory board of sympathetic people with industry expertise, or people who enjoy mentoring, or people who donate a few services on the come.

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Advisory Board Cofounder Phoenix Arizona 233

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

You should know that about two-thirds of businesses with employees survive 2 years and about half survive only five years. It’s important to evaluate existing businesses in the market niche of your choice. Market analysis. This looks at the target market for your product or service. Sales and marketing plan.

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Angel Investor Small Business Business Plan Intellectual Property 85

Up and Running

AUGUST 30, 2017

Projected enrollment growth and market demand can also be tricky to estimate. What criteria will you use in hiring staff? Write about the market and how you’re fulfilling demand. Do a focused market analysis. Next up is a market analysis. How big is your target market? Who is your target market ?

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Business Plan SBA Software Review Advisory Board 93

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 28, 2019

Market analysis. This looks at the target market for your product or service. It has a breakdown of your market segments, their geographic location, and what their needs are. How do they currently meet your target market’s needs, and how will you differentiate your product or services? Sales and marketing plan.

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Business Plan Small Business Administration Hiring Social Media 64

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Some rules about stock options and phantom stock: [Email readers, continue here…] The real insight here is that stock options or phantom stock are the tools of early-stage businesses used to attract great talent when there is not enough cash to pay market rates. In other words, you cannot create bargain options at below “market rates.”

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Equity Stock Options Vesting Early Stage 62

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Advisory Board. 8220; His three things (worth reading his whole post anyway) are set vision/strategy and communicate broadly, recruit/hire/retain top talent, and make sure there’s enough cash in the bank. Simply put, there is no market for RSS. He was having too much fun at Sun and turned me down.). Carpe Diem.

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Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

Austin Startup

MAY 29, 2019

I use the word natural deliberately because it is far easier to build solutions that will offer network effects if your market is actually wired that way. In Bazaarvoice’s case, the market was, fortunately, wired for brands and retailers to collaborate in a kind of grand bargain. The retailers were to provide the audience?—?and

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Networking Fractional CTO CTO Hire B2C 48

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

You are all frustrated when that never happens, even after years of 16-hour days, repeated efforts to hire the right people, and multiple campaigns to delegate more and sign up for less. For example, I was on the Advisory Board of a small company whose founder was killing his health through overwork, even though he felt high focused.

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Advisory Board Non-Compete Dilution .Net 152

OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

The book has been described by a few CEOs who read it and commented early for me along the lines of “The Lean Startup movement is great, but this book starts where most of those books end and takes you through the ‘so you have a product that works in-market – now what?’ What About Sales & Marketing?, questions”.

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Startup Advisory Board Elevator Pitch Forecast 95

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2016

In my role as an advisory board member for several startups, I’m always excited to see that initial surge of revenue from a great rollout campaign. Too busy to focus on hiring, training, and managing employees. Hiring the wrong people, or not training them, will destroy your business faster than running out of cash.

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Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 11, 2022

Referral Programs: A Guide for Small Business written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. By ignoring customer referrals or not incorporating customer referral program ideas into your marketing strategy, you're missing out on a valuable source of revenue. Referrals are invaluable to any business.

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Programming Small Business Advisory Board B2B 86

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 7, 2013

And the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, which should go into full effect by the end of 2013, will make it even more of a game-changer by opening the door for businesses to market ownership stakes in their ventures to people over the internet. Despite this, crowdfunding has a pretty big gap to fill.

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Advisory Board Entrepreneur Portland Oregon 249

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 2, 2023

Maximizing Your Marketing Impact With Fractional CMOs written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with JP Maroney In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview JP Maroney. 13:51] Have you seen any change in the market for businesses being more interested in strategy? [16:51]

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Marketing Social Media Business Model Advisory Board 53

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

If we think you may be cutting a sizable check and joining the board, we are evaluating you as a potential employee of our company. If you have some common friends, feel free to ask around about them, but if you want to talk to former employees, colleagues or other investors, don’t until you are fully committed.

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Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 26, 2018

Hiring people that fit a defined culture. The statement provides all the messaging for the employees and vendors to know exactly what the mission is and how to execute to this mission. The answer defines the size of the market and requirements to satisfy the market. Hire People that Match the Culture the Business Needs.

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Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Matching 100

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

(However, in some industries such as life sciences, founders may be tenured professors who are not going to give up their faculty positions, so they often become the head of a startup’s scientific advisory board, but aren’t part of the founding team.). If any of the answers are “Yes,” then hire them a bit later as an early employee.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

So Leon and I have met numerous times, about marketing strategy and the music one is that developed after Chicago became a customer. So that was sort of the direction that we thought about going in and it’s just hard to figure out the marketing strategy around that. Hamid: It’s kind of interesting. Dan: Exactly. Dan: Great.

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Cofounder Technical Review Chicago Technical Cofounder 199

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

And then there are options: [Email readers, continue here…] Stock options or phantom stock are the tools of early stage businesses used to attract great talent when there is not enough cash to pay market rates. The board must approve the plan including this number, and shareholders must approve the plan as well.

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Early Stage Equity Stock Options Vesting 102

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 14, 2019

Market analysis. This looks at the target market for your product or service. It has a breakdown of your market segments, their geographic location, and what their needs are. How do they currently meet your target market’s needs, and how will you differentiate your product or services? Sales and marketing plan.

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Business Plan Limited Liability Company Small Business Sales 79

venturehacks.com

MARCH 21, 2008

Normal advisors are also assembled by naive entrepreneurs who think the mere presence of an advisory board will create social proof and help them raise money. But investors don’t take these mock advisory boards seriously. Or they bring you a handful of great employees. Or they raise your money for you.

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Advisory Board Cap Table Vesting Equity 44

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

A huge untapped market opportunity.?. 1 year later we sat down and had an honest conversation with ourselves and realized that our One Thing, the thing we were most passionate about, that we could realistically be the best in the world at, and that was a huge untapped market opportunity was: Design. Only do your One Thing.

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Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

As a result, I have a very active and engaged data.world Advisory Board and investor base. And all of our employees receive these as well. All of the same lessons in this post apply to your Advisory Board members. To have invited all of my advisors to a regular Advisory Board meeting would have been unwieldy?—?there

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

It typically takes multiple iterations and pivots to find product/market fit – the match between what you’re building and who will buy it. Sales (and/or customer acquisition in a multi-sided market) becomes achievable by a sales force (or network effect or virality) without heroic efforts from the founders.

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Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 11, 2021

3 Types Of Referral Offers Every Business Needs written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I’m doing part two of a solo show series on where I’m going to be covering one of my favorite topics: referrals.

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Affiliate Advisory Board Networking Programming 96

OnlyOnce

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Their CEOs spend a ton of time hiring and coaching their leaders and shaping the complexion and direction of the team. They stress out about big expensive new executive hires when sometimes they just need to level-up an existing manager or “try before they buy.” We are here to make it easier for you to: Bolster your executive team.

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Advisory Board Leadership Portfolio Matching 71

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

OnlyOnce

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Their CEOs spend a ton of time hiring and coaching their leaders and shaping the complexion and direction of the team. They stress out about big expensive new executive hires when sometimes they just need to level-up an existing manager or “try before they buy.” We are here to make it easier for you to: Bolster your executive team.

Advisory Board 62

Advisory Board Leadership Portfolio Matching 62